Carnage
by TheManWithAPlan
Summary: Heroes from across the country converge on Brockton Bay as the Protectorate issues a city-wide manhunt. The gangs gather together to count the days until the inevitable kill-order. Her father shuns her. Her friends hunt her. An entire city wants her head, and her mind has become a battleground. Because sometimes, the voices in her head aren't always her own. AU, Butcher!Taylor.
1. Primacy 1-1

**Primacy 1.1 **

Vanessa hated the mall.

Sure, her friends loved it, and their friends loved it, and if they were all going then _of course _she was going to come with, but Vanessa never really understood the appeal of the actual place. There was just too much crap for sale that it turned shopping into sifting, wading through a sea of useless junk just to find some overpriced vest that might look good with her comfy pair of jeans. It was that shotgun approach that bothered her so much, of just throwing everything on the wall at once and hoping something stuck. A sensory assault of ON SALE and BUY NOW and EAT FRESH bombarding her every second of every hour, so while her friends were looking for clothes Vanessa was looking for a pharmacy to help get rid of the building migraine.

And the people, _and the people_! Vanessa wasn't sure what it was about the mall that brought out the sociopath in everyone, but she had seen shit too crazy even for late night cable television. She once saw some kids slashing a minivan's tires in the parking lot, she once saw a homeless man shitting into a potting plant without a care in the world, she even once saw a mother get into a fistfight with a grown man twice her size over something as trivial as a fifteen dollar refund!

She empathized with them in a way. Some people were like her, unable to process so many conflicting signals all begging for your attention, but where she wore headphones to help drown out the noise, they merely lashed out at over whoever shorted them the change on a cappuccino.

So when Savannah began flirting with Jack, Katherine responding by marching off in a melodramatic huff, and Maya following to console her, Vanessa decided she had had enough and strode off into the crowd. Maybe it was the fact that she was at least somewhat self-aware enough to know that this was only more middle school drama, and none of it would matter a week from now, or maybe it was the procedural generated pop song belted out by the boy with perfectly tousled hair playing on loop on the TV stands next door, or maybe it was the gas from those tacos with the weird aftertaste, or maybe it was a combination of all three, but something served as the last straw and drove Vanessa to move down the escalators and phone her mom for a ride.

More brand names floated past on her way down to the first floor, a garish kaleidoscope of consumerism where every color had been purposefully chosen to contrast against one another to more easily draw the eye with such jarring dissonance. Vanessa put on her headphones and set her playlist to random, anything to help drown out a thousand meaningless conversations all mixing together into a shapeless mass of raw noise.

Pretzels for five dollars, shoes for fifty, stereos on sale and _Dog With a Blog_ in theaters everywhere January 17th. Vanessa couldn't help rolling her eyes at the sight of Alexandria looking down from ten feet high. Only corporate America could so thoroughly destroy the invincible woman, when not even an Endbringer could mark her flawless skin. It probably hadn't taken the marketing team half an hour to reduce a demigod to a garish plastic idol asking Average Joe and his wife Sally to buy the latest in PRT-sponsored merchandise alongside the limited edition Ice World Eidolon action figure with real ice blast firing action (registered trademark).

Who could ever like the mall? All it ever did was serve as a reminder that even in a world where titans walked the earth, no one was above taking a paycheck.

Vanessa fired her mom a quick text and took a seat over by the water fountain. She saw kids half her age dragging their parents towards the toy store, begging and pleading that they just had to have whatever happened to be the current flavor of the day. She couldn't help but feel a brief pang of jealously. Man, did the seventh grade suck. You were still a kid but everyone your age acted like an adult, so by being in one world and playing at another you found yourself excluded from both.

"Bad fight?"

Vanessa looked up. A girl, not much older than her looked like. She was swathed in what looked like twenty layers of jackets and blankets to create some unidentifiable lump of clothing. Ski jackets lumped over sweaters stretched over an ugly brown vest. A blanket stained with mud and other, more pungent odors, was draped over the entire ensemble. No, it was more of a quilt actually, Vanessa could just barely make out the cross-stitching of so many cloth squares under the grime.

The filthy quilt was no exception. Everything the girl was in poor condition. Threads were coming undone on every sleeve layer. Colors had faded or been so thoroughly soaked in filth that a permanent brown shade had seeped into the cloth fibers. Her hiking boots still had obvious marks from where holes had been clumsily filled.

This was someone who had lived on the streets for a while now, forced to carry her entire wardrobe on her person to better stay on the move.

"Excuse me?" Vanessa blurted. She didn't mean for that to come out so aggressive, but she was still coming off the initial shock, combined with an ingrained suspicion of the homeless drilled into her by father since a very early age. He had offered a ride to the homeless shelter to a bum hiding out under a highway bypass. The bum repaid the kindness by stabbing her father in the stomach and making off with his wallet.

That had killed whatever spark of altruism her father might have held, but it also gave Vanessa one of the most valuable lessons to have in Brockton Bay: never let your guard down.

The girl held up both hands in a placating gesture. She gave a warm smile from the inner folds of her many drawn hoods. "Saw you walking away from what looked like some friends only to sit here all by yourself. Figured that there must have been some sort of scuffle over who kissed who and whatnot."

"Something like that, but not with me." Vanessa gave a light sigh. "I'm just a bit tired of people right now, is all."

"Eh, you get used to them. People, I mean. Yeah they'll try to shove some of the bullshit on their plate onto yours too, and you'll hate having to put up with it, but eventually the times gonna come when you've got your own crap heaping up, and soon enough you'll be ringing up whoever you can to try and spoon some off on them."

Vanessa rolled her eyes. "Thanks for the pep talk. Really needed a reminder today about how my life's inevitably end up in the crapper."

"Just calling it like it is."

"What it is is shit."

"You say that now, but talk to me when it really hits the fan." The girl sat down next to Vanessa on the metal bench. "Because I guarantee you, when you're at your absolute lowest point, when your head is so far below water you're about to hit the ocean floor, you won't be telling me how it's gonna get worse, you're gonna be telling me how it can only get better."

"Weird then, how every person who ever killed themselves was thinking that."

"Point." The girl chuckled. "I'm beginning to notice you're a bit of a downer."

"And what does that say about me when it's a homeless lady who's telling me to brighten up?"

Probably a bit too far, but that was Vanessa's weakness. She couldn't resist needling people past their breaking points, driving them up to the edge of their limits when she had such a low tipping point herself. She expected the girl to leave with some choice words muttered as she got up, and for Vanessa to wait the next fifteen minutes blissfully alone.

This time the girl laughed out loud.

A response came in the form of an exasperated sigh as Vanessa flopped against the wall.

She grunted. "So you're one of those types."

"I wasn't aware I was any kind of type."

"You know what I mean. The sunny-side-up kind of hobo who's only out on the streets dispense little nuggets of worldly wisdom to all the naive little boys and girls."

"An optimist, in another words."

Vanessa gave another eye-roll, not even bothering to mask her contempt. "That's exactly what you would say."

Another chuckle. "So now I've become some kind of storytelling cliche?"

"Next you'll give me a whole speech about how you're not homeless when you've made the whole world your home."

"Oh, that's good. Can I use that?"

"Only if you promise to drop the whole Clarence Odbody routine."

"Well what else am I going to use on particularly moody teenagers?"

Vanessa gave a condescending laugh. "Moody teenagers my ass." She sat up, trying to get a better view inside the girl's hoods. "I'll eat my headphones if you're a day older than sixteen."

A curious look came over the girl. She lifted a hand to her mouth before lowering it with twitching lips. She shook her head, as if clearing an idle thought, before turning back to Vanessa. "Close, but no ciggy." Her smile came back just as bright as before. "I've got voices knockin' around in the old rattrap that can still remember reading the headlines when Lennon took a bullet."

"Well at least you're crazy." Vanessa crossed her arms as she watched the tide of people flow through and around them. The song on her media player finished and shuffled to a new track, with Vanessa barely aware of the transition. "We're not breaking every stereotype here, only the one where the only time a bum ever talks is to ask for some change before fucking off from a simple no."

"Oh wow. Look at the big girl here using big girl words."

"Here's another." Vanessa lazily lifted both middle fingers and idly wagged them in metronome. "Although it's really more of a big girl statement."

The girl's smile fell away again, as quickly as it had come. She stared at Vanessa for a long moment before leaning in close, uncomfortably close, so close that Vanessa could smell the saltwater from the pier in her matted hair. "Bitch," she whispered icily, "I could feed you your fucking heart."

"Big girl." Vanessa gave her best High School Smile, where the corners of her mouth curled up but her eyes still bore a stony glare. "Big _words._"

"I'm not quite sure you have any idea who you're fucking with girl."

"That's a hard one, Trebek. Who is the smacked up junkie so stupid she can't even sell herself for a bath?"

"_Oh-ho-ho_, I'll tell you who I am..."

They both locked eyes, stares of cold iron grinding against one another with neither refusing to budge. Imperceptibly, Vanessa began breathing just a little bit faster.

Something shifted beneath the girl's cloaks, and she drew it in a maddened blur. Vanessa couldn't help tensing up for the blow...

She looked down, and saw the girl extending an open hand.

"Taylor."

Vanessa smiled and shook it, both inwardly and outwardly breathing another sigh of relief. "Vanessa."

Taylor gave a satisfied nod, the smile now returned to her dirt-smudged face. She then balled her hand in a fist and quickly struck Vanessa on the upper arm two times in rapid succession. Each punch landed with a meaty thunk as it sunk into the fat of Vanessa's arm, and already Vanessa was recoiling in shock.

She rubbed her already sore arm. "What was that for?"

A mischievous light played in Taylor's eyes. "Two for flinching."

Taylor laughed. This time Vanessa joined in.

They laughed together for a good while, laughing until their throats went sore and their eyes began to well up from the insanity of it all. This continued for a minute, and then another, and then another, and soon half the people in the food court were unsettled by a young girl laughing hysterically with a homeless person. Neither seemed to care.

Eventually their laughter died down, leaving only an awkward silence. Taylor's smile turned bittersweet as she looked again to Vanessa.

"You know what? I've decided something, Vanessa."

Vanessa wiped a tear from her eye before letting loose a last errant chuckle "Which is?"

"You might be a bit of a cunt, with little to no people skills, which by the way really makes me wonder what those so-called friends of yours who you ditched at the drop of a hat see in you, but I like you. You've got moxie, although I'm probably just saying that just because I love to say that word."

Vanessa noncommittally shrugged. "Then I'll be sure to write about it on my blog: _The Day I Sorta Talked with a Smelly Bum_. I'll even write about how I bought you a meal later, you told me your tragic life story, I invited you into my home, and that was how I found my new big sister."

"Not a bad idea. A story like that has some potential."

"Think so?"

"I can see it now. Book deals! Movie rights! Eventually we both retire on our royalties, you fart out some two-hundred page pseudo intellectual schlock every three years, every critic paints your crap gold to avoid rocking the boat, and Hollywood stripmines it all for Oscars."

"Now you see where I'm going with this."

Taylor shifted onto her back, one arm propping her against the bench. "One problem though, and I might be wrong about this: you don't strike me as much of a writer. That 'Fuck You' back there lacked delivery."

"Got all that from a middle finger, did you? Well, you know what?" Vanessa adopted a pensive look. She tapped a finger against her chin in mock-introspection. "You don't strike me as much of a homeless person. Too sober, for one thing."

"Fair enough."

Taylor turned away, staring out at the mall courtyard. The food court was just a few feet away, dozens of people gorging themselves on prepackaged sludge colored and compressed to resemble edible food. "So because I like you, I'm going to give you fair warning. Get out while you still can."

Vanessa's expression hardened, what little humor there was snuffed out by Taylor's startling sobriety. Stay out of arm's length. "My mom's coming in ten minutes, like that's your business."

"Won't be safe here in ten minutes. Leave now before everyone else can. It'll be chaos in those first few minutes, a thousand people all clamoring to fit through two or three doors. They won't care how they get out, only that they do, and they won't notice they're trampling a small child to death before it's too late. Then the capes will show up, and anyone still left inside will be collateral. Can't guarantee your safety then. Theirs either. Only my own because for some reason I can't die."

Vanessa's eyes widened. "You're that Taylor. The one on the news. You killed-"

"Wasn't surprised you didn't recognize me at first. No one does. Might be one of the voices that's responsible for that, some kind of imperceptibility field masking me like Nice Guy way back when. Still don't know which voice does what, or what they can all do together. All I know is what they want, and what they want is a fight."

Vanessa kept her face as calm as possible. She lowered her voice by a few degrees to avoid starting a panic. "You don't n-need to do this, you know. There are children here, teenagers, kids just here to kill time at the mall."

"They're _civilians_. As if that should mean anything when the entire city is a warzone."

"Some of these people might be shitty, but most probably don't deserve this. M-might be worth saving, yeah?"

"I was good, once. I think. I know I had plans to be better. Had the costume all ready and everything. Was gonna be a hero, didn't have my name figured out though, hard to come up with a bug-related name that doesn't seem pulled out of a Golden Age comicbook. I know that I wanted to help people. Society kept trying to fuck me over again and again, and all I wanted to was help. Tell me, Vanessa, I wanted to dogood. Doesn't that count for something?"

Vanessa stared vacantly into space.

"Vanessa?" Taylor said, choking back a sob.

"Huh? Sorry, what were we talking about?"

"I was telling you why I have to do this." A note of desperation crept into Taylor's tone. "You need to remember, just for now. You need to remember what I'm saying to you."

"Oh, sorry. I spaced out for a second there."

"I don't want to hurt them, Vanessa. It hurts me to hurt them. But the voices keep pushing me. It's the voices that are always screaming for it. Oh god the voices Vanessa." Taylor dropped her head into her hands, tears leaking through grimy fingers.

"Every day of every week for the past two months: always asking for one thing, one _fucking _thing over and over and over and over! Five's the worst, he keeps singing these songs I can't ever get out of my head, but sometimes Five starts speaking with my dad's voice telling me that he can love me again, that they can all love me again, if I just give them that one thing. And I know it's not real but oh Vanessa, sometimes I can feel myself starting to slip under the tide. I can't keep it up or I know they're going to eat me alive."

Taylor drew her head back up, her eyes shut as her shoulders slumped in exhaustion. She opened them slowly, dry of tears and now sunken in with deep bags hanging down.

"Vanessa?"

Vanessa wasn't listening. Her eyes had gone glossy and vacant, as if staring out at something far out on the horizon.

Taylor gently shook her. "Vanessa?"

"Hmm?" Vanessa was already reaching for her headphones, barely noticing that someone was still speaking to her.

"You didn't answer my question. Didn't I matter?"

"Everyone matters, I suppose." Then Vanessa got up and walked towards the exit, not really knowing why she had to leave at that instant.

She didn't know which one granted the power of suggestion, but it had its uses from time to time. It wasn't the arrows or the teleportation or even super strength that had kept her alive this far, it was the lesser known powers, minor ones liker her own, that had given Taylor the upper hand time and time again.

_Give us pain,_ whispered Butcher One.

_Give us rage,_ whispered Butcher Two.

_GIVE US BLOOD!,_ screamed Nine.

She drew the long knives from her robes, sharpened to a razor sheen, as she shouldered the full quiver slung on her back.

_Everyone matters._

Fifteen minds fought for dominance over her bloodied ruin of a body. When they gave her back control, she knew she would find herself knee deep in corpses, some human and some cape, and still the voices would call for more. They would always call, driving her to ever greater acts of depravity before she finally succumbed to the order, and took her place in the line of succession.

It would horrified her. It would exhilarate her. The world would brand her monster and all Taylor could do was carry on the slaughter. Soon, she might even enjoy it.

"_Blood,_" she whispered.

And then Butcher Sixteen began killing.

* * *

><p>...<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes<strong>**:** And here we have the only other story I've written after _Archangel_ and what partly led to the five month hiatus on _Orchestra_. This was originally posted on Spacebattles, so apologies for any formatting errors. I'll be moving this story about a chapter a day, give or take, so if you want to skip ahead, just drop by the original thread.

For those of you just joining us, I once described this story along the lines of "Welcome to Carnage, where character development comes in the form of a Mexican standoff taking place inside the main character's head during an _actual_ super-powered Mexican standoff." And if that doesn't hook you, then I don't know what will.


	2. Primacy 1-2

**Primacy 1.2**

Good.

Do good. Be good. Good work. Good job. Good luck. Good grief. Good old boy. Good for what ails you. Good to go. Good to be here.

Good riddance.

Repeat a word enough times and it begins to feel unfamiliar in on your tongue. It becomes a series of repeated meaningless sounds, altogether separate from spoken language, one no longer recognizable through audible pronunciation. Not like you forget the word of course, but more like you have unconsciously forgotten how to say it. This is known as semantic satiation, for those interested, and for most people it was just a funny little trick kids would giggle at. I wasn't any different. Eight-year-old Emma and I would say "noodle" over and over again until it seemed like we were shouting gibberish at each other. Emma would then think up a tongue twister to give me, with every word starting with the letter _n_.

For the past two weeks, every thought, every action, almost every second of the day I wondered if I was still good. I asked myself that same question so many times it evolved into a personal mantra to defend against the competing entities warring inside of my psyche. Soon _good_ stopped being a question of introspection, but rather a flimsy mental fortification to shore up failing defenses on a particularly brutal day when all fifteen were united against me. Soon it stopped being a question at all, because the only way to keep control was in the absolute certainty that I was in the right. Sure, maybe my past wasn't even close to clean, or even more so my crimes on the few occasions when the Butcher took over, but I was fighting from the moral high ground simply through passive act of resistance.

A delaying tactic of course. Futile. Wasteful. It was all just to buy myself time against an opponent that could potentially last until the end of the human race, and it was the only thing I could do. The voices kept getting louder. It became harder to tune out my thoughts and emotions from ones they had planted in quieter moments. It became bad enough that telling myself I was still good couldn't cut it. I no longer had the willpower to so completely lie to myself, like believing in Santa even after you've seen your dad sneaking under the tree. Every day they crept a little closer in, and for all the times I could hastily nail wooden boards over broken mental windows, eventually they were going to force their way inside.

I focused on something more basic than morality. I focused on _myself_. I chose to do good. I never chose this. Free will became my fixed point, a weathered rock buried in the earth battered by the waves for ten thousand years. Every action, every conscious thought, was separated into _mine_ and _theirs. _I drew a line in the sand, one they could not cross without rendering the host insensate. The voices crashed on me but could not find a handhold. I could find bring back some semblance of control back into my life. For a very brief time, I was Taylor Hebert. Much like when I first donned the costume, when I first went up against Lung, refused Armsmaster, joined the Undersiders, and set out to become a hero, I thought that _I could beat this_.

Now the only control I had was in the inch of space between the knife point and the girl's trembling eye.

A face coated in sweat and livid with fear. She couldn't have been older than twelve or thirteen, and she was so stricken with terror that the only sound she could make was a mewling noise somewhere between a dying cat and a wailing infant. It took me a moment to realize that she had been repeating the word _please_ that it didn't even sound like spoken language at this point. Heh. It wasn't that this girl actually thought begging would increase her odds of survival by an even infinitesimal amount, it was that _please_ had become her own personal prayer. Something to keep her mind together so she didn't have an outright heart attack.

My hands were wet, although I was relieved to see that it was only sweat gathered on the inner glove. A quick inspection showed no signs of blood or bodies, my clothes were relatively clean of human viscera, and the mall courtyard had been emptied. Thank god for small mercies. I had caught myself just at the point of no return. That small relief might not have changed anything, with an innocent's life just a hair's breath from a violent end, might not have given me the strength to drop the knife, might not have even quieted the voices, but it was one small gain after an unending series of losses.

Speak of the devils...

_Now remember pretty girl, _One lectured, in his rough Boston accent. _What we're looking for is high quality meat, with a sweet, rich, full-bodied flavor. That's what sells for a premium. Thrifty, properly fattened hogs weighing about 180 to 250 should do just fine. Hogs of this size are easier to handle for a beginner, and the meat chills out a little quicker. You can get some good medium weight cuts if working carefully, and those will cure quicker and a little more evenly than heavier cuts._

_You can't make me do this, _I thought back,_ I'll fight you like before._

Two said nothing. He only laughed.

_GUT HER! _Nine screamed. _GUT THE BITCH YOU SPINELESS CUNT!_

_You will never bear children, _said Three. _You will die alone, unloved, and after your passage you will join your place here with us._

_Now, we can begin by removing the excess from the carcass, _One continued,_ Do you know what excess is, pretty girl? It's all the fleshy bits that we can't use, stuff like hair, skin, fat, and let's not forget, the __**eyes**__. Normally we would have all kinds of tools for a job like this, but unfortunately we're going to have to improvise with what's on hand. _

_Leave her alone and I'll do whatever you want._

_LIAR! _accused Nine.

Three joined in. _Dogs and cats only fight because they love each other._

_He's right. You've made promises before, pretty girl, and you've never delivered. You've lost our trust, pretty girl, _he tsked lightly,_ a very stupid thing to do in your situation, so now we have to do things the __**hard way**__. Now don't interrupt. I'm teaching here and it would do you some good to listen. _

I could taste salt. I wasn't sure if it was from the nosebleed or the sweat pooling at the corners of my mouth. _I won't let you do this. I __**will**__ fight you._

_Sure you will. That's why we set all of this up. You want to __**fight**__ us. You want to make things __**difficult**__. You still think you're that same pathetic little girl who landed a lucky hit. You still think this is something you can beat. We're going to need to change all of that if this is going to work. We're going to have to start right from square one. And what better way to start, than with a little hands on lesson? My daddy had the right idea here: Only way to really teach a child is to throw them in the deep end and see if they can __**swim**__._

_The Protectorate are on their way. It's only a matter of time before a dozen capes show up to stop you._

_Let them, _Eleven cut in. _They won't come near us because we have a hostage. They won't capture us because we can fight them all off and they know won't kill us because we're __**us**__. We're un-fucking-touchable for the time being, so cut the crap so let's cut the crap and get your cherry popped._

_Your father is weeping, _Three whispered,_ He is alone, and he is weeping. Hummingbirds are filled with rage._

My hand moved from above the eye to above my victim's neck. It dropped a quarter inch, low enough to just barely nick the girl's skin. She let out a strangled yelp of pain before A bead of bright red sprouted below the shaking knifepoint, my entire arm violently spasming with the only thing keeping this girl from an unprompted tracheotomy was what little control I still had left over my limb. I poured every inch of strength I had in restraining myself, so much so that it began to have a physical effect. A migraine gathered at my temples while a thin line of blood trickled down from my nose. I wanted to scream but couldn't risk an outburst. I was so close. So impossibly close to not only ending a young girl's life, but to losing my own with it.

_Taylor._

No. That voice...

_I understand if you let go. You're only human, Taylor. No one could have expected you to hold out for so long. No one could have that strength. But you can't hold the world up forever Taylor. Eventually you're going to have to set the burden down. It's not your fault. Just let go._

Four was both the most clever and the most sadistic. She mimicked the voices of people taken from my memories, using them to slowly turn the most private parts of me against myself. Out of all of them, Four was the one who had come closest to breaking me. After six days of almost no sleep, no food, and no shelter, I found myself huddled in a subway bathroom. Just as I was about to let myself slip away into a dreamless sleep, I heard my father calling out from behind the door. It sounded so much like him, even down to the nicknames he called me as a kid. He begged me to come back home, that he had spoken with the PRT, that they could find a cure if I would only _let him in_.

I wanted to believe. I wanted to believe so much. Even though some part of me knew this was a trick, knew about the sheer impossibility that I could ever go back home, I opened the door. All I saw was an empty station, with the warped echo of my father's spiteful laughter. That was the closest I ever came to cease being Taylor Hebert, and becoming Butcher XVI.

This time would be different. It would be different because against all odds, Four had fucked up. She had picked the one voice that by telling me to give up would inspire me to do the exact opposite.

My goals had shifted. I wasn't going to resist, to passively accept failure as these psychopaths reshaped me into something monstrous. I was going to survive. I was going to win. I was going to remind these motherfuckers who they were dealing with, because my mother was _off limits_.

This wasn't a battle of physical strength. It was one of willpower, and right now I had enough will in one mind to match fifteen. For the first time since Lung, when I decided to fight one of Brockton Bay's most powerful parahumans with nothing but a few bugs, I went on the offensive.

Slowly, the knife began to rise.

_How very cute_, One dryly remarked, _Pretty girl went and finally grew some balls. But don't forget who wears the pants in this house. We __**own **__you._

I felt like Sisyphus and the stone from trying to lift my arm. For every inch of progress made, it would drop down half that. But I was making progress. For the first time, I was winning. I could almost see the tug of war between me and them translated in the physical world as fifteen hands tried to drag one down with them, their smug grins of satisfaction beginning to melt away to expressions of barely restrained anger and surprise. My anchor became something more than a rationalization. It became an ultimatum. They wouldn't use me. They wouldn't use my mom. Not my dad, not my friends, not my family, not even Emma or Sophia. My mind was my mind, and it was high time these squatters starting paying up rent.

_You're not the first, _a voice said. It didn't matter which._ You won't be the last. They all think they can come out on top, but in the end the house always wins. Five thought so, he lasted a week. Eleven thought so, not even five days. Three thought so, thought he could still be a hero, ha! It took some time, yes, but we tore his mind apart and left an empty husk behind in his place. We can do it again. Just give us a reason, pretty girl. Become more trouble than you're worth, and I guarantee you'll be begging for my Teeth to end you by next month._

_All the world is checkered in black and white. What is yours, and what is not._

Enough of this thoughtspeak crap. I had to speak. Had to remind myself I still could. Every word came out like I was chewing glass, but it didn't matter. They were my words, messy and broken, but still _mine_.

"E. Ver. Y. One. Ma. Tters." I gasped out.

I drew myself up from the floor, the knife trembling at my ear.

"I. Ma. Tter."

_And when you die, pretty girl? You'll just be another whisper in the next Butcher's ear, your psyche so damaged the only thing you can say are vague non sequiters and goth prose. You won't __**matter**_, _pretty girl. In this life, or the next._

I looked down at the girl. Tears had run her mascara, even though she looked far too young to be caring about things like makeup.

"Run," I just barely managed to grunt out.

She clumsily scrabbled to her feet and ran towards the entrance.

_This can't last. Eventually you're going to slip up, or better yet someone is going to end you. Then we just take up residence in their head and pretend you never happened. Either way, pretty girl, Butcher wins._

He was right. This wasn't a game I could win.

So I changed the rules.

With painful slowness, I drew the knife to my throat. My arm was still shaking uncontrollably. I grabbed the hilt with my free hand to hold it in place.

"What. Hap. Pens. If. I. Do. It? Where. Do. You. Go?"

Silence. Either they didn't know or it was a fate they didn't want to share. Good.

"Here. Is. The. Deal."

_Deal? There is no deal. We are gonna enjoy flaying your mind apart, pretty girl, and hope the next one turns out a bit more promising._

I pressed the blade's edge at the soft spot where the jaw met the neck. I waited a moment for a retort. Silence again.

Good, now we were getting somewhere.

"We. Need. To. Find. A. Bal. Ance. Be. Cause. If. We. Don't. Things. Will. Get..."

The knife was beginning to draw blood. I considered my word choice for a minute. "Messy."

_If you do follow through, it's an absolute certainty that wherever we go, you're coming with._

"Bet. Ter. That. Than. This."

_Is it? I'm inside your head, pretty girl. I know that you don't want to die._

"You. Are. Right. Don't. Want. To. Die. But. Don't. Want. You. To. Win. Eith. Er."

_Fear tastes like apples._

_You think it's that easy? You think that you can threaten __**us **__and get away with it? We don't __**compromise**__, pretty girl. We have one rule and one demand: The Butcher leads the Teeth, and the Butcher must lead the Teeth. You killed Fifteen, we got stuck inside of you, so now you __**will**__ do what __**we**__ say, because if you don't, you won't have enough neurons left in this empty head of yours to even comprehend just how fucked you really are. We can make you suffer for__**lifetimes**__, pretty girl._

"You. Can. But. I'm. Hold. Ing. The. Knife."

There was silence for a few minutes. I could hear various sirens wailing outside, a crowd of people dialing friends and family to see if they were still okay. I had done this. I had incited panic and terror into the lives of ordinary people just as surely as any of the monsters like the Slaughterhouse Nine.

Finally, One spoke. _You got balls, pretty girl. Holding yourself as hostage, that's just the right kind of stupid. Maybe there's hope for you yet._

_Drop the knife. We're declaring a truce for the time being._

I sucked in air as found myself in control of my faculties again. "And why should I trust you?"

_Because they now know you've let the hostage go, which means capes are gonna be busting in here any minute. More will be coming after that._

Sure enough, the skylight exploded. Through the hail of falling glass, I could just barely make out a costume of red and gold. Aegis.

_You wanted freedom. Here it is. Now do something with it._

_Run, pretty girl._


	3. Primacy 1-3

**Primacy 1.3**

"Taylor, if you'll hear me out-" Aegis began.

He had probably thought up a speech on his way here, just like he had heard from more senior capes. Word choice would walk a fine line between professional and relaxed, tone would be kept comforting with a small degree of wariness. He would begin by bringing up my history, mention my mom, the bullying, almost definitely Lung and my brief stint on the right side of the law. He would do all that only to realize empathy was the wrong tack to take with someone called Butcher.

So then Aegis would talk about control, self-discipline, identity, how who we are as a person doesn't need to be defined by the mistakes we've made in the past. He would tell me everything about Butcher Three and how his downward spiral into insanity only began by letting himself listen to the voices, to let them get claws into his mind. I would laugh, shoot back that he only had to ignore _two _voices, and it was enough to drive him to suicide. Aegis would then shift gears to talk about absolution through action. The only one who could help me was myself, and although I wouldn't believe it, a small part of me would have liked to.

And then at last, just before the two minutes and sixteen second length of time allocated for the distraction, Aegis would offer his hand. Starved for human interaction, _any _human interaction, I would reach out to take it, and as soon as I did, I would get a tap on the shoulder courtesy of Clockblocker. Fast, efficient, and with no need for anyone to start calling themselves the seventeenth Butcher.

It would be a lecture worthy of someone truly deserving of the Protectorate mantle, almost worth sacrificing my freedom, my mind, and my life, if only for the opportunity of having someone tell me that it was all going to be okay.

I never got to hear it. Aegis was cut off by the knife now sprouting from his throat.

A cape's power is only half of their _power_. They can cross continents in seconds, shatter mountains, commit localized genocide, hold the power of the sun in their hands or rewrite the fundamental structure with a thought. But no cape is invincible. They can be beaten just as easily as anyone else, because with every power, comes it's shortcoming.

What isn't common knowledge to the common masses is that our true strength comes from our reputation, either carefully cultivated through the hard work of a very dedicated PR team, or by growing a garden of bone trees in the city park. A reputation mythologizes us, transforms us into these almighty beings standing head and shoulders above the everyday man. We give ourselves names and we wear such ridiculous costumes all to add to that image, to obfuscate the fact that underneath that mask is just another human being, as infallible as all the rest. Somehow, a cape is not seen as a human with powers, but as something _more_.

People thought Aegis was infallible, or more accurately, invincible. They were wrong. It was all part of an image, the name, the costume, everything from how he spoke down to the way he fought. But he wasn't invincible, and here, an immunity to pain and an inability to die were as much weaknesses as strengths. They allowed me to fight without holding anything back.

I had already drawn three more daggers as the first knife was leaving my hand. Blood was beginning to stain the white portion of his costume to match the remaining crimson half, with the force of the throw forcing Aegis back a step. I flung the volley upwards with a sweeping wave of my hand. I didn't bother aiming, Fourteen would handle that.

The blades curved in their trajectory, subtly arcing downward at too steep an angle, too fast a descent for simple gravity. Before she died, Fourteen could have drawn her bow on one end of the city and pegged her target on the other. Although I still carried her arrows, knives still carried a certain convenience that synched well with Fourteen's accuracy. Easy to hide, easy to draw, lacking the speed of an arrow, but against certain capes the surprise could be devastating.

The knives were pulled downward like meteors caught in a planet's gravity well, and I struck in the one point three seconds before they landed.

I teleported behind Aegis just as each dagger embedded itself in his chest, then drew my balisong and rammed it into the back of his skull in one sinuous motion. I got the balisong cheap from a local flea market, and it had already proven its worth in a fight. While the daggers worked as a distance weapon, they were throwing knives after all, and so lacked the maneuverability of a longer handled blade. I still didn't know how I knew that, nor how I knew the intricacies of proper knife fighting, but I suspected that had leaked down from the other Butchers.

The balisong had been driven a few inches deep enough into the skull that I had to exert a degree of caution when pulling it out, lest my enhanced strength take Aegis's head with it. I teleported again, with Aegis being violently thrown forward by the ensuing detonation. I was now on the mall's second floor.

One of the more handy tricks in the grab bag of suck I had been given, Six's power was both a useful defense and offense. There were limits, of course. A range limit, about twenty to thirty feet, and the actual explosion didn't carry any more concussive force than a grenade. Not much when compared to more heavyweight Movers and Shakers, but I could certainly make use out of it.

It was obvious why they had sent Aegis in first. He was one of the few capes who could outright ignore most of my powers. I knew I could hurt him yes, maybe even disable him if I had the time, but he would have backup coming and my brief window of escape was narrowing by the second. Even this probably wouldn't even slow him down, but I had to get a momentum going. Hopefully it would take a minute or two for his body to rewire itself while I made my escape.

If only.

My "danger" sense kicked in almost as soon as I reappeared. Three's power, What that exactly felt like is...hard to put into words. It was like when spiders would crawl in my bed at night. Although I wasn't distinctly aware of them while caught in the periphery between sleep and consciousness, I still knew there was something there. Except this was more subtle. Also less subtle. It's complicated.

No time to teleport. I wrenched my head down so fast I might have given myself whiplash. Almost instantaneously, an arrow zipped by the empty space that my cranium once occupied. It passed so close I could actually feel the fletching brush past my ear. I gave the arrow a brief glance. Black shaft. White fletching. Pointed arrowhead, definitely lethal, embedded in a nearby bench. I flipped it over easily with my enhanced strength, using it as cover while constantly checking any solid surfaces.

_They're playing for keeps this time_, said Two. I ignored him.

"They finally decided to let you off your leash?" I shouted into the empty atrium. I switched on Two's power, his circulatory sight. The world faded into pastel colors of featureless grey and white as I scanned the mall for anyone hiding. There had to be others. Just had to find them. Shadow Stalker's power partially consisted of her fading into nonexistence, it would be all too likely that I couldn't see her in her shadow state if she ceased having organs.

Silence. Aegis had pushed out the throwing knives and I could see him as a floating mass of arteries and capillaries, lines of light pulsing to the beat of a blazing beacon of light caught in the center of his chest. He flew upward out of my sight's range, red and gold fading back into grey.

Danger. This time from behind. I teleported just a few feet to the left before almost simultaneously teleporting further to the right as a juke. Each detonation went off in perfect synchronization, blowing apart large sections of cheap floor tiling and scattering human litter upward. Another arrow zipped past me as I watched is shift back into reality. Defense wasn't going to cut it here. Shadow Stalker would fight me like I fought Aegis, a relentless assault to keep even a teleporter on her toes.

"You know, this makes me wonder," I shouted as Shadow Stalker loosed another arrow, this time from an angle and direction that suggested she was moving closer. "Why would they send Wards? Normally it's only been official capes, real heavy hitters, who have been coming after me." I said, blinking back down to the first floor, back to soak in Aegis's bloodstain, before reappearing on the third.

"I mean Aegis I get, can't hurt him, right? But why _you_, Shadow? Compared to me, you're just so weak, so fragile, so helpless that they had to have known you couldn't have had a chance." It wasn't hard to feign contempt. I had already heard enough from the other Butchers to have it practically dripping off of every word. "So the question is, why would they send sheep, to hunt a wo-...?"

I hadn't even finished the sentence before Shadow Stalker sprinted to me, phasing out from the far wall as some spectral haunt. A mottled camouflage cape billowed behind her as she carried a loaded crossbow in both hands, with another slung over her shoulder. I hadn't just provoked her. I _enraged _her.

She didn't make a sound as she glided towards me, transparency transitioning to flesh and blood as Shadow Stalker returned to the physical world. Her mask betrayed no outward expression, bearing a stern expression both haughty and regal, like some forgotten goddess of the hunt. But I could see her eyes beneath, and they told a different story. Livid, almost bloodshot, with a manic edge to them that I imagined one only saw on the suicidal and the insane. I knew in that instant that Shadow Stalker wasn't looking to take me alive, Butcher Seventeen be damned.

.I teleported behind her and flipped open my balisong. No more running. It was time to match my momentum against hers, and see who would be carried away by the tide.

I slashed across her midsection, but she briefly turned incorporeal before spinning around. A follow up swipe was deflected by the steel of her crossbow, sparks actually flying in the low light of the setting sun. Shadow Stalker took a step backward to put some distance between us, her crossbow still intact and aimed at the ready. I closed the distance with one long step, knocking the crossbow aside with an outstretched hand at the moment she pulled the trigger.

The arrow shot wide. Shadow Stalker retaliated by pulling her secondary crossbow free with one hand and firing in one fluid motion. I don't think she even bothered aiming, but I still teleported out of the way to be sure. I blinked down to the second floor, with Shadow Stalker following via a controlled backflip in shadow state. Sometime during the fall, she had reloaded.

It was then that it hit me. Why was I still fighting? I could be half a mile away in the span of a few heartbeats. Even the other Butchers had told me to run. So why was I still indulging Shadow Stalker in a personal grudge match?

She fired again. I dodged it easily with a lazy sidestep before hurling a throwing knife her way. Shadow Stalker didn't even bother moving, merely dropping into her shadow state so that the knife passed harmlessly through her.

I teleported back up to the second floor. Again, I had to ask myself: Why was I still fighting?

"You think you're strong!" Shadow Stalker screamed up from below. That caught me mildly off guard. Apparently the one thing she hated more than being called a loser was actually _losing_. "But I know who you are, Taylor Hebert! I've read all about you, every last detail of your pathetic excuse for a life laid out on a table and dissected in painstaking detail! No friends. No family. Nothing but the lowest bug on the food chain, and even when you gained the slightest bit of power, you somehow managed to sink even _lower_."

Each word felt like a nail being driven under my skin. She was a bully, and every bully had the same tactics, the same strategies. Shadow Stalker knew just which buttons to push, which weak links to exploit, how to attack the most vulnerable parts of myself in ways I could never learn.

Still, I couldn't let her know that. "For someone so low on the food chain," I shouted back, "I seem to be pretty high up on everyone's list."

"The only reason, _the only reason_, any of us would so much as waste a second thought on you is because you were at the wrong place at the wrong time. You're out of your league here, Taylor. There's nothing special about you, nothing _exceptional_." Shadow Stalker was now visibly trembling with rage, her crossbow sweeping from corner to corner, "Run as far or as fast as you like, but sooner or later one of us is going to kill you, and I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure it's me!"

I materialized directly behind her. "Anyone ever tell you you talk too much?"

Why was I fighting her? The answer was obvious. If I couldn't face Shadow Stalker, if I couldn't' beat someone just like the bullies that drove me into this situation, how could I possibly hope to fight the fourteen other voices in my head and still come out on top?

She fired, but I was already gone. Third floor, and she knew it. She knocked another bolt (how many did she have on her, I wondered, probably somewhere around two dozen by last count) then began to sprint up still moving escalators. I considered which approach to take. Her reflexes were too fast for direct ambush. Ranged weapons would have no effect so long as she could switch into shadow state. Time to switch tactics.

I drew my bow.


	4. Primacy 1-4

**Primacy 1.4**

This wasn't a fight. It was a love story.

We were born for each other, me and her. I would loose an arrow, she would fire back. I would vanish in a flash of fire and shrapnel, she would melt back into the walls to start it all over again. We kept that going for a while, a game of cat and mouse not entirely grounded in Euclidean geometries, never making headway as we traded the roles of unstoppable force and immovable object between us as easily as we might swap masks.

A bolt caught me in the shoulder. It was enough to drive me back a step, but it didn't drive itself deep. There wasn't any force behind the shot, no anger, no passion. Her conviction had been slowly worn away, raw rage and fury and passion traded away for a sliver more of focus. What we said or who we were had become meaningless, now there was only the dance.

I flashed upwards with the arrow already knocked, reappearing in open air just above her. I fired in the brief second before inertia took hold, cracking a smile as another explosion blasting outward with another black shaft immersed in immateria zipping past the smoke and fire. I couldn't see her face past the grim mask, nothing but her eyes, but some part of me liked to believe she was smiling back. Maybe Shadow Stalker understood the humor of it all. Maybe not. Comedy, after all, means something different to everyone.

I saw her with Second's sight as she stepped back into reality, a living spiderweb pulsing faster and faster to the beat of our animosity. I drew another arm's length arrow and fired in the span of half a heartbeat. It fired straight until Fourteen's power drew it corkscrewing down in a rapidly spinning orbit. Shadow Stalker vanished again, dropping back into grey against gray. My arrow passed through her once-heart and drove itself into the wall. She switched out of shadow state to reach out and snap the arrow off by its head, only to drop back in before my follow up shot hit home.

Time lost all meaning with the twang of our taught strings. This fight could have lasted for hours, days, weeks even, and I would have barely noticed. We had created a symphony, she and I, one of detonation, one of implosion, a song sung in equal parts through medium of bow and crossbow. The other Butchers hummed their approval. I felt myself slipping away, losing the part called Taylor to the siren call of a duel to the death. Maybe this was the work of the other Butchers. Maybe it was me finally coming to terms with some repressed sense of brutality buried for years under layers of imposed self-control. It didn't matter. We both let go, and lost ourselves to the music.

A flash and a bang and I was behind her again. I didn't bother with the balisong this time. As soon as Shadow Stalker spun around with the broken arrow gripped in a gloved hand, I teleported a few feet forward and beyond her. She was caught between the two explosions, and before the first blast could even knock her back, the second threw her forward. I continued with a third teleport, then a fourth, then a fifth, all to disorient and contain her within a small ring no more than five feet wide. Shadow Stalker managed to shift somewhere between the third and fourth blasts, using the distraction of the fifth as an opening to slash at me with the arrowhead.

It was a dance that could continue until the end of eternity. When we ran out of arrows, we would fight with knives. When I would grow hungry, I would unmake and remake stray detritus and debris into a base form of nutrition, subsisting on nothing but dust and dirt. When her body finally succumbed to the slow entropy of age, she would fully immerse herself in that other state, continuing the battle in a haunted unlife. After humanity's slow extinction, we would duel in the ashes of our species. After the sun grew red and our planet was nothing but a scorched rock, two wraiths would keep stabbing with blunted arrowheads. And after our dying sun goes nova, the last breaths of the solar system finally running out moment by moment, whatever was left of us would dance our lethal dance on the event horizon of a collapsing star.

She stayed in her shadow state as a precaution against any more teleports, so I took the initiative. I sprinted forward, rushing through her before blinking back to higher ground. She transitioned back to flesh after a brief moment of hesitance. Shadow Stalker had probably never had her power so completely turned against her. Luckily for me, her intangibilty was a two way street. A relatively minor flaw in her power that I could readily exploit, although Shadow Stalker would probably shift tactics to compensate.

A pair of crossbow bolts shot up from the floor just beneath my feet, arcing high up before clattering to the ground as they resolved back into physical form. They had to have been fired blind, if she was aiming I knew I would have been nailed to the floor from below. I resisted the urge to teleport again. Shadow Stalker wasn't trying to hit me, she was trying to get me moving again, away from a superior position to somewhere she could line up a better firing angle.

Play, counter-play. We were truly born for each other.

_She's strong,_ said One. I suddenly had the mental image of a fat, greasy lech of a man, slowly running his teeth over a very dark thought. Insults and death threats I could handle, I dealt with enough back in high school, but to be complimented by someone as deranged as One? I responded with the mental equivalent of a very strong shudder.

_Better yet, she's ruthless,_ said Six. Why start chiming in now? And what was with the sudden upturn in positivity? The Butchers never praised me unless they were certain it was going to end in homicide, and worse yet, they had to know this would distract me, give her a critical advantage in a struggle currently balanced on a knife's edge.

_A fairly useful power,_ Twelve added. _One can only imagine all of the...possibilities._

Oh _shit._

The Butchers weren't talking about me. Shadow Stalker had impressed them. They had found their Butcher Seventeen.

I whipped out my balisong and pressed the edge at my throat. It didn't take much strength to cut through my tough skin, and luckily I had managed to take myself hostage before the other Butchers could put up a meaningful resistance.

_Really? This again?_ One flatly asked.

_Sorry if I'm beginning to bore you,_ I shot back, _But I'm kind of in the middle of something._

_So then why waste time with the knife?_

I cut a little deeper, drawing a bead of blood. It hardly provoked a reaction. It would seem that I had one card to play, and it could only be played once. I know what you're thinking and I promise you it's not going to happen.

Eleven smoothly cut in. _All we were doing was window shopping, just idle browsing when something shiny caught our eye. Can you blame us for being a tad intrigued?_

_Sally sells seashells by the seashore. Everyone dies. Naughty Sally._

_You don't get to trade up just yet._ I blinked away from another shot by Shadow Stalker. She had somehow made it up to the third floor, and was using her superior height to rain down a near constant barrage. I weaved between bolts as best I could, then flashed downward I'm the only body you've got.

_Might not be up for you to decide, pretty girl, One muttered. Maybe we start muckin' with your next teleport, maybe one of those arrows of Tall, Dark, and Sexy manages to land its way into this empty little head of yours. See, here's the beauty of it: We wouldn't even need to take over. All it takes is a small little misstep, a stumble in your run, a blurring of your vision, a twitch of the arm, and we have ourselves a shiny new body to play with._

_Shadow Stalker knows I'm the Butcher. She won't kill me._

_She has tranq darts. She isn't using them._

_But she's a hero!_

_Sure,_ Two giggled. _When it suits her. But that's not because she actually believes in any of it. It's because the Protectorate are the only ones willing to let her pick the wings off of all these flies. Shadow Stalker knows that if she did what she does now, as a villain? They would be giving the kill order within the week._

_Unless..._ Four added, _We make her an offer. We give her freedom, and the best kind of freedom too, freedom through power. What then, Sixteen? Would you believe this women strong enough to resist temptation, to cast aside the only thing she has ever wanted out of life?_

I didn't dare think of an answer. New plan then. I wasn't going to win this fight the same way twice. I needed to adapt again, think outside of practiced thought patterns and beyond what the other Butchers could predict. I went with Occam's Razor, the principle of parsimony. The best solution to any problem was usually the simplest. The problem was Shadow Stalker. The simplest solution: remove Shadow Stalker. Incapacitate her, she can't kill me, and the Butchers are forced to cut their losses and return to the original arrangements of our truce.

I flashed across the second floor, exiting from the jump in a full sprint. What I was looking for could be found in only a select few easily accessible locations, and I knew the layout of the mall easily enough.

My danger sense kicked in again, and I came to a dead stop. An arrow materialized a few inches from my very exposed head, and I had only barely started resumed running before my danger sense was screaming again about more bolts headed my way.

I nocked two arrows on the string while on the move. I pulled my arm back to fire, before something harshly yanked it to the left. Both arrows slipped out of my fingers, clattering to the ground. I could hear several Butchers laughing, but I didn't break stride. I had a very small window of opportunity here and I couldn't afford to waste a second of it. The Butchers were beginning to work against me. Keep control. You can do this. Just a few minutes more.

The electronics store was locked, so I smashed the door down with a small sliver of enhanced strength. The location was perfect. One of those locales long since rendered obsolete by the exponential growth brought by the information age, but had managed to hold on through the right combination of tenacity and pig-headed stubbornness.

This wasn't a place where the new jarringly clashed with the old in a desperate attempt remain in the ever shrinking circle of relevance, where CD players were sold alongside IPhone cases and so appealed to neither demographic. This was the youngest generation of antiques shop, a place where the dinosaurian age before the Internet could still find a home among the nostalgic and contrarian.

Standard definition televisions, outdated battery types, Walkmans, flip phones, a thousand relics with no real place in the modern age. No dust lined the shelves, every price tag looked freshly printed, a banner had been hung

up proudly advertising a short lived sale for the weekend. Whoever owned this shop had poured their heart and soul into it. They had taken pride in their work, in owning something truly theirs, and it showed.

Time to get to work. I had maybe three minutes before Shadow Stalker caught up to me. Think fast, act fast. First, I would need materials.

I dashed to the front counter and grabbed one of those disposable cameras, the cheap non-digital kind you could buy for five dollars almost anywhere, along with a roll of packaging tape. I teleported deeper into the store, almost annihilating the front entrance, where I found myself in the hardware section, next to the wire coils. Good. I threaded out two six inch lengths of breadboard wire off their larger bundles, then snipped them off with the balisong. Any wire would do, but something thin and insulated would work best.

Two minutes, thirty-three seconds. I could still hear them laughing. They knew everything about me, had lived every memory as deeply as I had. They knew about the bullies, about my life before my trigger event, and they could see I had already pegged Shadow Stalker as your typical adolescent abuser. The Butchers wanted to hurt me, and if they wanted to kill me, what better way than to leave me trapped as a passenger in someone else's mind, utterly helpless as I watched a psychopath play out her twisted games?

No. I wasn't finished yet. I had fought them before and won, I had regained control for the first time in weeks. I could beat them again. Next, I pulled out one of my more delicate throwing knives and cut along the paper seam of the disposable, then split it in half. I removed the camera battery nestled between the lens and the film canister, then gently eased out the circuit board.

One minute. Now normally, I would solder one end of each piece of wire to the leads of the circuit board, but I didn't have the equipment or any powers governing heat. Instead, I called on Eight's power to loosen the molecular structure of the metal, allowing each joint to lose rigidity and flow into one another. I re-solidified the metal again once I was satisfied with the patchwork solder, then slotted the battery back into the circuit board. Taking care not to let either end of the wires not tied to the circuit board touch, I fit my makeshift weapon in the palm of my hand. I delicately fixed the wires to run along the inner length of my index finger and thumb, then liberally applied tape to adhere it to the inside of my glove.

Fifteen seconds. My time was up. I couldn't let Shadow Stalker find me here. I needed to go back on the offensive. I flashed out the store and into the open atrium before teleporting behind a pillar to provide some measure of cover. Now I just needed to get close, within arm's distance at least, provided my other selves didn't kill me first. Verbally baiting her wouldn't work twice, but I could still misdirect her...

I gathered up a few burger wrappers from a nearby table, then worked Eight's power on them. This time, I didn't just weaken their molecular bonds, I made them unstable, just enough that when balled together each wrapper became the equivalent of a weak flashbang. I tossed one out from behind the pillar, and a small snap of an explosion sounded in response. Not as strong as those caused by my teleports, but enough to hopefully fool her into thinking I had shifted positions.

Now to find her. I hurled the second wrapper further down, over the balcony, where it "detonated". I peeked my head out from around the corner to scan the upper floors.

There, to the upper-left. Imperceptible when looking directly from above, but when viewed from the side I could see the outline of a girl with an athletic build and wearing a stern-faced mask. The other Butchers had fallen silent. They wouldn't dare interfere now, they were too enraptured to see how I would play this out.

I teleported directly behind Shadow Stalker, then gave her a light tap on the shoulder with my right glove.

"Tag." I whispered in her ear, "You're it."

I connected my index finger to my thumb, completing the circuit and sending a tiny electrical charge into Shadow Stalker's incorporeal body. Normally it wouldn't give anyone anything more than a small jolt, like a shock from an electrical outlet, but I knew electricity was poison to Shadow Stalker while in her shadow state, the one thing capable of reaching her beyond reality's membranous divide.

Her body instantly seized up as she shifted back to her physical form, limbs contorting and convulsing as she lost control of most of her nervous system. Homemade taser, I remember watching a how-to-build once on some late night T.V. show. just to teach the basics of building an electrical current. Never thought it would save my life here.

"Now that we have that settled..." I slowly paced around my enemy's twitching body. I bent over low as a thin tendril of drool began to drip down from beneath her mask. I could still see her eyes beneath, livid with an anger that would even put some of the other Butchers to shame.

"We can talk."


	5. Primacy 1-5

**Primacy 1.5**

When I was a kid, I had two great loves in my life: candy and soda. Maybe you can see where this is going.

Can you blame me? They were something forbidden, a corrupted taboo constantly kept under lock and key lest two full-time employed parents should face the wrath of a hyperactive seven-year-old. So it was one day when after getting back from school, Dad having passed out on the sofa from pulling overtime and Mom still at work, I hatched myself a plan. Halloween had been two weeks ago, I knew where Dad had hidden the stash, and most importantly, the soda from last week's barbeque had been placed on the bottom rung of the fridge.

Prophecy could not have predicted a more perfect confluence of events, and I knew I had about fifteen minutes before Mom came home. I grabbed a random piece of candy from the pile hidden beneath Dad's favorite jackets, which kind wasn't a factor in this grand scheme of mine, then slipped downstairs and pulled out the liter of high fructose heaven with two tiny little hands. Everything was in place, I had prepared myself a feast worthy of the gods and nothing could stop my ascension into my Valhalla. And then...Mom came home ten minutes early.

Foiled again! I had to get rid of the evidence, yet I refused to come so close only to lose it all to mere chance. I did the only logical thing in that situation, I killed two birds with one stone. I ripped open the wrapper and shoved a fistful of candy down my throat. Then, I unscrewed the bottle cap and began to chug.

The candy, if you must know, were Mentos. The soda, Diet Coke. In hindsight, this could have been where the long streak of shitty luck currently shitting itself all over my shitty life might have begun.

Suffice to say that the end result was a very messy kitchen, a very awkward car ride, and a very unpleasant stomach pump. Moral of the story, I decided to swear off candy and soda for the remainder of my natural born life, which to my perspective, was probably somewhere around the following Tuesday.

Ever had an idea you thought was so absolutely brilliant, so undeniably perfect, that all you needed to do was set the first steps in motion and the rest would simply fall into place? And did it blow up right back in your face almost immediately after it began?

As soon as Shadow Stalker recovered, twenty seconds after the I shocked her, she tried phasing down through the floor. Thirty seconds after the second shock, she swiped at me with a strangled roar and a blunted arrowhead andthen tried to phase down through the floor. This continued until about the fifth time I had to taser her, and it was then that I realized that this was the wrong way to go about it. Shadow Stalker carried a kind of animalistic mentality, I could see it through the way she fought, the way she dressed, through all that talk about predators and prey. Extending an olive branch would only be perceived as weakness, so the only way to get through to her would have to be on her own terms.

If she only responded to force, then fine, I would give her force.

She dropped down through the floor, and this time I let her. I teleported over the railing and back down to the first floor, taser gauntlet primed and held at the ready. I knew her shadow state caused her to fall at a slower speed than gravity allowed, and I turned that to my advantage. When Shadow Stalker fell through, I was waiting for her. But this wasn't an ordinary trap. I wouldn't be suckered into another war of attrition, because now, I could end it before it began.

Her specter slit out of the ceiling and I caught it with an outstretched gloved hand. I connected finger to thumb, completing the circuit, and this time she fell on the current just as she was phasing through my hand. Shadow Stalker rematerialized with a heavy thud on the ground, a line of drool hanging out of the corner of her mouth, but I wasn't done yet. I lifted her up by the throat with a light exertion of enhanced strength, and held her there for a long moment. After her eyes stopped rolling back into her skull to focus on me, I shook her, hard. After getting her attention, I slammed her back down into the floor with enough force that I heard something crack. I could give a fuck if I left her paralyzed from the neck down, the Protectorate had healers, and I wanted this shit done., excessive force be damned. Better yet if she couldn't walk, she couldn't run away.

Well said, Sixteen, said Eight. I shoved that thought as far away from my conscious mind as metaphysically possible, then dragged Shadow Stalker up to eye level. Her head lolled back in a daze, so I shook her again to try and get her to refocus.

I spoke slowly and deliberately, marking every word as a sentence as if l was lecturing a small child, and calling upon the skillset of every Butcher to help me give my best impression of an intimidating expression. Best I could pull off was probably somewhere on the sliding scale between insane and deranged. "Are. We. Done?"

It clearly worked, because the ever-present contempt in her gaze had all but evaporated. Shadow Stalker weakly nodded, always keeping her eyes trained on me. She might have been suffering from a concussion, but at least now she was willing to listen.

"Good." I took a leap of faith and let go of her, giving an imperceptible wince as her head struck the hard tiling again. Was she really paralyzed? No, I could see her foot twitching. That was how it worked, right? Whatever, Panacea or some other healer could handle it. That was their job, keep the heroes in fighting shape so they could hunt me down like dogs.

I dropped to a knee. Shadow Stalker remained laying on the floor. Something was burning, and it carried the foul scent of burning plastic. Arrows and crossbow bolts had been randomly scattered about, some affixed to walls or floors, others just fallen where they couldn't find any traction. Dozens of scorch marks from each teleport had been etched into the floor. We had done quite a bit of damage through our dance. Not a battlefield, by any stretch of the imagination, but enough to give a brief whistle of appreciation.

Finally, I spoke up again. "Ever fought an Endbringer, Shadow Stalker?" I kept it limited to yes-no questions, in case she couldn't speak.

She seemed surprised at that, but after a moment's hesitation, briefly shook her head.

"I have. Well, not me me, but one of me. Twelve years ago, Butcher Eight. Behemoth, New York. Although I guess he called himself something different back then." I fell back into a sitting position in an attempt to get comfortable. "He didn't want to. No one ever does. I can understand why, of course. Just imagine it: yesterday you were bragging about knocking off the local bank, and the next day you're not only likely to die, you're expected to. Before you even have the chance to reply to the call, they're cramming you into something that looks straight out of a summer sci-fi blockbuster with strange capes with strange faces. Soon a screen flicks on, showing a faceless voice you know only as Dragon rattling off all the horrific ways you're going to die. Electrocution, incineration, disintegration, evisceration, liquification, and if you were lucky enough to survive the day you had a long date with leukemia waiting for you. You begin to sweat, maybe from the heat, maybe from something else, and step off the ship to something out of Dante. Dozens upon dozens of capes against the backdrop of the world on fire. In the distance you can already hear the sounds of fighting. Eidolon floats over and give you all a canned little speech that could basically be summed up as 'no matter how hard you fight, you're still probably going to die' and then, at Behemoth's earth-shattering roar, Alexandria herself orders the attack. No predators, no prey. Nothing in the animal kingdom comes close to this, save a group of ants coming up against an exploding volcano. There's no hierarchy there, no clear sides, just something uncontrollably cataclysmic that only you have a chance in hell of stopping."

I turned to Shadow Stalker. "Think about turning back and you die. Think about your next move and you die. Think for even a moment about how fucked you really are and you die. There's no time for planning or foresight or even to piss yourself, you just do it. Your entire life shaved down to a few seconds of do-or-die, you have to do it; there are no other options. You hit the burning street and you're told to move as fast as you can up the block without coming in kill range. I saw a lot of capes just drop and try to hide behind cars and and in buildings, only to burn alive as Behemoth raised the temperature by a few thousand degrees. I saw Behemoth point a gnarled finger and a number of capes just drop...period. It was a hell of a way to attack something."

God, you make me sound like such a pussy.

"Worst part was the smell. Like roasted pork rubbed in with melted rubber. It got in your eyes, into your mouth, it seeped into your skin and clothes. You could even see how the bodies were just beginning to cook at a low simmer, because they've been out there for a bit and it was getting hot enough outside to sear a steak well done. Some of the skin slipping off their legs and arms, their costumes long having since been boiled away into nothing. Most of them were just kids in way over their heads. At least that's what it seemed like, with so many bodies and masks and colors and costumes blurring together, even...even the little ones..."

Shadow Stalker spoke up, her voice ragged and small with a shrinking windpipe. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you seem to have such a fascination with being the top of the food chain," I replied. I had my head turned away back out to the mall. "I'm here to tell you that you're not, and you never will be. I've seen and fought against real monsters across my sixteen fucked up lives, from Behemoth to Leviathan to even the Slaughterhouse Nine. I know monsters, Shadow Stalker, and trust me when I say this, I don't measure up."

She shifted back up against the wall, if only to prop her head up to speak with me directly. "Big talk, but I know they're not you, Taylor." Again, she spat the name out as if it were an insult. "You didn't kill the girl and you didn't kill me, so that, and the fact that you haven't already fucked off to New York to lead the Teeth, means you're going against your orders here."

"Doesn't mean I'm innocent. I'm still perfectly okay with causing you a bit of damage."

"Beat me, strangle me, break my legs and shove an arrow up my ass, but you'll never convince me you're the Butcher."

"They wanted you to kill me." I said, with an almost distracted tone as I intently studied the shattered window dome from Aegis's entrance. The sun of high noon reflected off a thousand shards of heavy glass, the reflection thrown upward in a blinding shimmer of light.

That gave Shadow Stalker pause.

"It's why I was slipping up by the end. Getting desperate. They were taking back control and I had to fight them off. You saw it, which was probably why you tried to pin me down in the hardware store. You were trying to get me cornered and force me into a position where I would do something stupid, which would then give you ample reason to use lethal force."

"You honestly think I'm dumb enough to kill you?" she shot back.

"I think you're dumb enough to try." I countered. "Where's your backup? I'm a wanted fugitive just shy of an all out kill order, and I've just taken a hostage at knifepoint. That warrants more attention than two Wards."

Shadow Stalker fell silent. I didn't like the look in her eyes, of something wary and lethal just waiting to spring out if threatened. I gave her brief look with the turn of my head, then stared back out across the promenade. I wasn't going to get any information out of her without sufficient leverage. Time to change the subject. "What does it say about you, I wonder, that fifteen killers almost unanimously decided that you would make a far better psychopath than me?"

I could hear the creak of leather gloves as she balled her fists so tight no doubt the knuckles turned white.

"I'll give you a hint, it doesn't mean what you think it means." A smirk crept up the corner of my mouth as I drew the balisong from my inner coat. I idly flicked it end over end, opening and closing in a series of repeated patterns too fast for the naked eye to follow. The patterns were nonsense and the rhythm erratic, but it was something to busy very twitchy fingers.

Her eyes narrowed. "You're deluding yourself if you think that somehow makes you better than me."

"Wrong. You might have strength, but that doesn't make you strong. The Butchers don't give a shit about that because the other powers can compensate for it. What they want is someone easy to control, someone with very obvious vulnerabilities and insecurities they can exploit. They don't want you because you impressed them Shadow Stalker, they want you precisely because you didn't."

"That makes no sense."

"Then think about it. Say Aegis offs me, and he becomes Seventeen. It gets complicated. He wants to be a hero, they don't, he'll resist, they'll drive him insane, eventually someone finds a way to kill him, and they move on to the next host. All of that takes time, and in that time their Teeth remain leaderless, which causes them to lose power and influence. I've already lasted long enough that they're more than willing to write me off as a loose end and look for easier prey. And then there's you: the unbalanced hero who went apeshit from a few minor jabs at your pride. You wouldn't last a week as Seventeen before you were back in New York."

"Or maybe you're just rationalizing. Butchers must know strength when they see it Taylor." I could see the satisfaction behind her words.

There. I snapped the balisong shut, turning back to Shadow Stalker with a wide smile. "Oh, you're really not as good at this as you think you are."

"Wha-"

She was cut off by a harsh zap to the neck as I jabbed the taser deep into her. This time Shadow Stalker slumped into unconsciousness. I hoisted her up in a fireman's carry, shouldering the burden easily with a small helping of super strength. I couldn't teleport while carrying her, but hopefully I could still run fast enough.

We weren't alone, despite Shadow Stalker's best efforts to get me talking as soon as I began looking at the charade. It was extremely subtle, almost insidiously so, but the angles in the atrium didn't precisely line up. The reflections of off the shattered skylight were too spaced out for such a high ceiling. Although it seemed almost impossible for the eye to discern, the cavernous space had been compressed to something far less manueverable.

I switched on my second sight, only to take a step back in appreciation in the dozen or so bodies lined up outside. Some were hovering in the air, others crouched low to the ground, one had managed to sneak up to the second level and flatten herself against the floor. That was probably Vista, then, to set up a cage while the others screened the perimeter. All of this had been exactly what I was afraid it could be, a delaying tactic just to set all this up. Shadow Stalker was the bait, and now the trap was sprung.

I adjusted my grip on the comatose heroine as I cracked a few joints in my stiff neck.

Once again, Taylor Hebert against Brockton Bay. Round Three, Fight.


	6. Primacy 1-6

**Primacy 1.6**

Oh fuck me that last line was lame.

I sighed, more out of exasperation than any physical exhaustion. Hauling a comatose Shadow Stalker up to her feet, I held her by the waist as I whipped out my balisong to level at an exposed throat. Fighting that many heroes was out of the question, especially if the Butchers tried to break the peace again. Shadow Stalker, Aegis, maybe the rest of the Wards and one or two big boy capes? Maybe. Almost a full half of Brockton's heroes? Hell to the absolute no. The only way I was getting out of here was with yet another hostage, and a fairly large heaping of grade-A bullshit.

"I think we all know the score here," I called out to no one in particular. "Any hostile action directed to or around me, and I will kill her." As I spoke I rotated slowly, trying to keep as close to a three hundred and sixty degree view as possible. Most of my powers had been documented and logged, they knew about the bloodsight, meaning that they knew that I knew where they were hiding. That didn't mean an ambush would be completely impossible given the unpredictability brought on by cape-on-cape combat.

It didn't matter if I convinced them, a cape's life in physical danger represented too real a threat to warrant unnecessary risk. However, the Protectorate was not the police, every second the situation progressed they were brainstorming half a hundred ways to take me down. Permanently, if circumstances demanded it, kill order or not be damned. Better yet they could probably just call the PRT and get a kill order approved in the next fifteen minutes. This couldn't devolve into another war of attrition like with Shadow Stalker. I needed to move, fast.

Still no response.

_Psychological warfare. They're trying to spook us,_ Four chimed in. _Get us to keep calling out, automatically put us on the defensive and lose what little confidence we might have built up through victory. Greatest insult you can give to your enemy is to ignore him, as the saying goes._

_Damn, Four, that actually sounded surprinsingly...helpful._ I replied.

_Don't get used to it. I've seen what Panacea can do, these heroes can send us back to her diced up into neat little cubes and we'd be waking up in a jail cell the next day._

Seven spoke with a dismissive tone. _Bah, simple cages of wood and iron. Like zat could hope to stop us._

_You know what I meant,_ Four spat. _They catch us and we get foamed from ears to asscheeks. Then we can look forward to spending the rest of our afterlives in the Cage._

_A soul is a prism, one ray of white light splitting into ten thousand colors,_ whispered Three. _Yours is so many shades of red._

Division in the ranks? I had rarely seen anything but agreement among the other Butchers, but maybe some of their motivations had shifted due to a conflict of interest between the base instinct of survival and the slightly opposing goal of leading me into suicide by cape. Goading them could widen a potential wedge, although I was sure One would see right through that. Ugh, it was like playing a game of chess against an opponent with a three move advantage. Anything I would try would be broadcast clear as day. I shelved the thought for later, not daring to dwell for too long and allow the other Butchers to pick up on it.

I kept advancing towards the mall exit, one hand poised at the ready. Keep moving, keep rotating, always keep the head behind her own with in a weaving motion. Don't fall into cycles, stay as unpredictable as possible. Curiosity would stay their hand, because why would a teleporter ever need to take a hostage? I was my own getaway.

But I got it. Communication wasn't the most open avenue given my current mental state, so if I needed to hold someone at knifepoint just to open up a simple negotiation, then so be it. Better than having the standing order when dealing with Butcher sit somewhere at shoot on sight. I awkwardly slid past the revolving door of an entrance, only to be greeted by a double barreled shotgun leveled square at my head. Miss Militia's scarf masked the bottom half of her face, but her attitude and stance were clear enough. Shoot on sight might have been a bit too apt a comparison here.

I peeked my head from behind Shadow Stalker, who weighed a lot more than I would have thought an intangible girl should. "Miss Militia," I said in the friendliest voice possible.

She barely even blinked, keeping that same impassive expression along with my head right between her iron sights. "Butcher."

Flanking her were, of course, Assault and Battery. Behind them stood Triumph, and the ambient static raising the hairs on my arm told me that the cape currently circling to my right could be none other than Dauntless. Aegis hovered a few feet above, and I was relieved to see no sign of a knife wound visible on his chest or throat. I could make out Velocity standing at the far end of the parking lot, and Vista was probably still inside the mall. A brief glance with second sight confirmed that was everyone, although it unnerved me that they hadn't brought any Tinkers along. Maybe not Armsmaster, but maybe borrow a suit from Draon, or at the very least Kid Win. The heroes would have learned and adapted from our last confrontation. This seemed too...formulaic.

A moment of awkward silence passed. "So...uh..." I trailed off as my eyes subconsciously fixed themselves to the ground. "You start?"

"Very well," Miss Militia began. Damn, Shadow Stalker showed more emotion, and she was wearing amask. "Despite already knowing your answer, I would begin by asking if you would surrender yourself peacefully." A shift of green and black, and the shotgun became a minigun held low to the ground in two hands. The change seemed almost instantaneous, far too fast to exploit for an opening.

I shrugged helplessly. My knife scraped loud enough to pick up against the body plating. I could see Aegis tense up, even when settled into a low hover. The others didn't react. "You answered your own question."

"And will you surrender the hostage?"

"Well now you're just wasting time."

Miss Militia sighed. "Then what are your demands?"

I couldn't help but feel an unexpected surge of guilt at that. That was new, and it threw me for a loop. It was something beyond judgement, this was something deeper, more genunine. I was seven years old again and Mom had caught me eating candy and drinking soda. She wasn't mad at me, just disappointed, and it hit me hard. I tried to ignore it as best I could. It might have even sparked a small mote of anger, but I stamped that down and refocused myself on the exchange. She couldn't honestly have been expecting anything different, could she?

"Simple, I leave and no one follows. In exchange I agree to lay low for the next week, make your lives a little easier and let the Protectorate focus on the gangs for a change."

Battery spoke up. "You can't promise that in your current condition."

I gave her a brief glance before moving back to Miss Militia. "Doesn't matter. I have a hostage, and a power that will let me know the second any of you try to rescue her." While they might know my powers, I was hoping that each power's limitations wasn't quite as common knowledge. Bluff and bullshit in equal measure.

The heroes shared a brief look between each other. Miss Militia responded. "Done, on one condition."

I raised an eyebrow quizzically. This was good. No fighting, just talking. The first steps on a very long road back to sanity. "Being?"

"We treat this as a truce, Butcher-"

"Taylor, I insist." Might be a bit rude to cut her off, but at this point I needed any reaffirmation in my own identity if I had any hope of staying in control. My identity had already been blown wide open, and all that name represented were a slave's chains. I would much rather the entire world see me as weak, human Taylor, than as just another notch on Butcher's metaphorical belt.

Miss Militia's tone softened. The minigun became an AK braced against her shoulder. I didn't know what to make of that. Smaller caliber meant I was getting through? "Then we treat this as a truce, Taylor. For a grace period of one week, we'll give up the hunt, and in exchange, you cause absolutely no trouble. Should you break that truce, we will be forced to regard you as...unstable."

"Meaning I'm open season to every villain in Brockton Bay."

Her silence was her answer.

"You understand just how stupid that would work out, right? Put a kill order on me and you have every wannabe and poser flocking from across the East Coast to inherit a free set of seventeen powers. That's going to cause more damage than I ever could. If they do kill me, you'll still need to contend with Butcher Seventeen, who would be the greater of two evils simply by being an unknown."

"We have...contingencies in place."

I couldn't help but give a dry chuckle at that, yet from the uneasy expression I could see on Aegis, I could tell Miss Militia was being deathly serious.

She could be lying, bluff and bullshit in equal measure, but something told me that Miss Militia didn't carry a very good poker face. She wore her emotions as plain as her flag scarf, which was probably why she looked every part the image of a stone-carved statue. But what contingencies could she be talking about? Something the other Tinkers were working on? Was that what this truce really was, a crude attempt to buy time while Armsmaster or Dragon built something to contain the Butcher consciousness?

That could be my potential way out. If the Butchers could be trapped, even contained, without a host body, then it could mean that each individual identity could be separated from the rest. Granted, I doubted it would be as simple as that, but still, there was hope, right? Best case scenario, I get to die without getting stuck in Eighteen's head, and at the mercy of the others.

I wasn't sure which was worse, that such a device wasn't impossible, or that I was considering my own death as a viable solution.

Set that aside for now. I kept moving down my very short list of demands. "Next, she," I said, readjusting my one-armed grip on Shadow Stalker for emphasis, "is coming with me."

Miss Milita's gaze hardened again, although her gun remained unchanged. "That is not negotiable." she said.

The balisong shifted into a reverse grip, with the point fixed directly below Shadow Stalker's trachea. From there, I could use my enhanced strength to shove the blade straight up into her brain, beyond even the reach of Panacea. "You're right, it isn't. I take her with me, and I give her back in one week." I said, dropping the smile. No use placating them now.

That provoked much more of a response. Dauntless drew his arclance in a flare of contained lightning, the lines on Battery's costume began to pulse far brighter, and Aegis landed on the ground with both fists clenched tight. I tried my best not to drop my hostage and flash the fuck out of there, because again, despite all my powers, I was still standing alone against a handful of veteran heroes. Standing my ground almost always proved to be suicide in my tenor as Butcher, and old habits died hard.

An AK became a sniper rifle with a laser pointer affixed on the scope. Although I couldn't see it, I could guess that the red dot was currently fixed on whatever part of me I had left exposed. She didn't need any level of precision at this range, hell, snipers never even needed the laser to aim. It was just a scare tactic, but I still tried make myself as small a target as possible regardless.

Miss Milita's stare alone could drill through a skull at twelve hundred meters. "If you think," she said, "that you can use an appointed Ward of the Protectorate as _collateral_, then you are sorely mistaken."

"Only way I can guarantee you follow through on your part of the bargain."

"And how can you guarantee you will? Make whatever promises you want, Taylor. You're still an extremely volatile schizophrenic who has displayed nothing but violent and irrational behavior since the moment you inherited the Butcher powerset! What guarantee do we have that you won't kill Shadow Stalker the second you're out of sight, kill order or not? What about this situation is any different than when-"

I couldn't help but raise my voice at that. "It's different because it's me in control now! Look at the mall security tapes, sure they'll show how I took a hostage, but they'll also show that I let her go. The Butchers wanted me to tear her throat out with my bare hands, but I fought back and won! Why can't any of you see that?"

"And the incident at the docks? Against the Empire?"

"That wasn't _me_!" I was shouting at this point. the knife pressing deep enough into Shadow Stalker's exposed throat to draw blood. "Why can't any of you understand that they made me do that. Since the moment, since the first moment I killed Butcher, I've had fifteen crazy fucks working every second of every minute of every hour for the past two weeks doing everything in their power to drive me insane."

"And that is why we're giving you this truce, but we can't risk Shadow Stalker's life without either her consent or any promise of safety."

"WELL YOU DON'T HAVE A FUCKING _CHOICE!_" Spittle flew from the dry corners of my mouth. I could feel a vein in my forehead bulging. Whatever rationality I might have once had was quickly draining away. Dammit, I needed to get out now.

Miss Militia didn't even flinch at that, although I was just barely cognizant as to how tense the situation had become. If I made one move, even the barest twitch towards my hostage, they would fall on me in one surging tide. People would fight, people would die, and I would only be the worse for it.

Second sight told me someone was approaching, from inside the mall. Whoever it was began coming down from the second floor, past the compressed lobby and towards the doors. Vista? No, someone taller, more mature by vague definition of body shape, standing close to her as an interwoven tapestry of veins and capillaries blurring together into a hovering cloud of translucency. I ignored them. Danger sense would warn me if they were planning to spring a trap from behind, and Vista's power had little effect when people stood in the way.

I forced myself to lower my voice. "Why does no one understand that I'm the victim here. I'm as much a hostage as Shadow Stalker for fuck's sake, with the only difference between us being that I can drop my knife at any point. She can go live her life after this, hang up her mask and cape and live out a perfectly fucking boring existence. But with me? I'm in this for eternity. Until I finally work up the courage to put a bullet in my brain or cut my own damn head off, and then who knows where the fuck I'll go, I'm stuck having to fight for control of my own fucking mind-"

I was interrupted from my self-pitying rant by a small voice speaking up behind me.

"Taylor..." she said, almost in a whisper.

Any other words died cold and alone in my throat. I spun around. They brought her. They were actually stupid enough to bring her. Of course this was what they wanted. This had never been about a truce, or a negotiation. What the Protectorate wanted was to provoke a fight, for me to give them ample enough reason to sign my own death warrant.

Even knowing all of this, even knowing exactly how I was being manipulated, I couldn't help myself. Shadow Stalker dropped from nerveless fingers, as I slowly turned to face her. A costume of blacks and whites, garish minimalism more suited for the harlequins and jesters of old. A domino mask hiding such bright eyes, such impossibly bright eyes...

And it could only be her.

"You."

"Um...heeeeeeey there, Taylor." she said, before giving an awkward little wave and smile.

"_YOU!_"

The world became red. Thoughts and patterns and truces and lies all dissolved underneath a blinding veil of crimson. Sensation dulled under as the killing rage took over in a kind of synethesia pumping in tune to my own hyperactive heartbeat. Everything stopped making sense as every plan came undone in an explosion of thread and fiber. Fifteen voices began screaming or laughing, I couldn't tell which, because none of it seemed to matter. Something narcotic flowed through my veins as the adrenal cocktail hit the bloodstream, stretching seconds into hours into eternity. Maybe some part of me liked this SENSATION, letting everything go to the KNIVES, but I couldn't bother to notice.

Something restrained my arm. A beast of negatives charged against positives, lines of light not unlike the transparency of a circulatory system. Someone was shouting and I though I could hear gunfire in the distance, but none of it seemed to matter. Something was screaming, something small and wounded and feral. It had a name once, now it had sixteen.

I didn't even know I had drawn my knife until I realized I was trying to carve out her eyes.


End file.
